


Repair

by FrenchTwistResistance



Series: I’ve Always Been Crazy But It’s Kept Me from Going Insane [14]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23101798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Hilda and Lilith repair an old typewriter together. And maybe repair more than just that.
Relationships: Hilda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Series: I’ve Always Been Crazy But It’s Kept Me from Going Insane [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597594
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	Repair

Hilda’s got her typewriter operation set up in the back den, which had many years ago been Father’s study. It’s not functionally the best space for it. The lighting is bad—more suited to quiet contemplation while drinking port and smoking a cigar than intricate, close work with tiny pieces of metal. And the mahogany desk is large but a bad work bench because the size of the drawers and its position on the shortest wall preclude more than one chair to be comfortably pulled up to it—and that chair is a giant leather desk chair behind it. But it will have to do. No one has been in this room for years, and it continues to be conveniently neglected by the household residents.

Hilda takes a last look at the set of small screwdrivers and rags and polish and solvent and other various implements she’s laid out on the desk, repositions the angle of the bright jewelers lamp she’s clamped down. And then moves one of the velvet armchairs she’s dragged over another few inches closer. Lilith will probably complain about the placement and cajole her way into squeezing into the leather desk chair with her or end up propping herself suggestively on the edge of the desk anyway, so she doesn’t think too hard about it. 

She’s not sure whether she’s supposed to pre-summon Lilith with some specialty preamble spell or whether she’ll be waiting for her or what. They’d set a time, but it’ll be her first time doing it without a note explicitly telling her to, so she’s a little apprehensive.

She lights the black summoning candle she’d rummaged around in the attic for and lights it:

“Lilith. I summon you.”

The flame jumps to four times its typical height, and then in rushes a torrent of scorching air.

“The candle’s a nice touch although unnecessary,” Lilith says from the doorway. Hilda turns to look at her: she’s draped against the jamb in a set of crisply pressed fisher stripe coveralls.

“The coveralls are a nice touch although unnecessary,” Hilda counters.

“Didn’t want to give you the impression I was here for anything but to work on our project,” Lilith says as she brushes past Hilda to inspect everything on the desk.

“How thoughtful of you,” Hilda says, rounding the desk and sitting with her hands folded on it.

“Should we start with—” Lilith begins even as Hilda begins,

“It’s nice to see—”

They both pause and look at each other. Lilith laughs,

“It’s nice to see you, too. Should we start with disassembly and a good cleaning?” Hilda blushes and then,

“Probably best. Maybe you could start on the cylinder, and I’ll tackle the keys?”

“Very reasonable,” Lilith says.

They spend two hours fumbling with very small rusted screws and finicky brass rods, hands brushing as they trade tools or help each other catch parts that are halfway to rolling off the desk. Lilith has stayed in her velvet armchair across the desk, has said her pleases and thank yous and excuse mes. As far as Hilda can tell, the only one of them deliberately touching the other to try to elicit a reaction had been Hilda herself—but only the once, just to try it out, and Lilith had fluttered her eyelashes and smiled and then politely moved her hand away. Hilda’s a little disappointed, but she also wonders if this means Lilith really does respect her.

As Hilda’s got her nitrile gloves on, dunking keys in a bowl of solvent, she’s starting to develop a headache from both the extended period of concentration and the smell. Lilith says,

“I can’t stay much longer.” Hilda looks up, and Lilith looks as calm and confident as ever, but there’s a sizzle in her aura that not many witches would be able to detect—a frazzling, a pulling away from this realm.

“Oh,” Hilda says. She dries off z, x, and c—she’s been cleaning in qwerty order so she doesn’t get anything too mixed up—and lays them on the tea towel with the others, deposits her gloves in the waste bin. She looks at the wall clock as she squirts an ample amount of hand sanitizer and rubs it in. “Two hours is about your limit, then?”

“Two and a half,” Lilith says. She’s still poking at the free-floating carriage release with a q-tip. But then she stops and looks up. “I wanted a few minutes to just talk to you.”

“Ok,” Hilda says. She stands, crosses to the chaise in the other corner of the room, sits primly, waits.

Lilith carefully places her pieces on a different tea towel, throws away her q-tip and gloves, sanitizes her hands with the same plastic pump bottle, glides over to Hilda. Instead of sitting next to her on the chaise, she plops onto the floor against Hilda’s legs and settles her head onto Hilda’s lap. She says,

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Hilda says. She knows it’s probably a bad idea, but she does it anyway: Not even a second later and her fingertips are starting at Lilith’s scalp and moving purposefully through wild hair, feeling each bump and ridge of cranium. It feels just like it had with Mary’s physical stolen body—but now with an eeriness, some slight current of dark, incendiary magic pulsating under her hands. A not quite actual Mary but almost in the most disconcerting way.

Lilith chuckles, and it reverberates against Hilda’s thighs. Lilith says,

“I’ve been thinking I might try out a different form. In future encounters.”

Hilda’s fingers hit a tangle in curls.

“And why’s that?” Hilda says as she picks through the snare and continues combing.

Lilith cranes her neck and looks up at Hilda,

“It makes you uncomfortable that I’ve retained Wardwell’s countenance.”

Hilda clenches at the strands in her hands, pulls gently so that they maintain eye contact, says,

“Maybe. On a certain level. But I’m not sure how able I might be to abide a stranger. The devil you know, as they say.” Lilith leans into the pull, says,

“So you wouldn’t want me to project someone else? Say Miss Kingston, for example?” Hilda is completely still, processing this last bit.

“Too much cognitive dissonance for my taste,” Hilda says finally as she resumes her fingers’ path.

“So your preference is the appearance of Wardwell?” Lilith says.

“Your caring about my preferences feels both accommodating and invasive…”

“But if you had to choose…?”

“Second best arms and first best cheekbones,” Hilda says.

Lilith smiles.

xxx

Several days later, and Hilda’s raking leaves. 

Considering all the trees on her property, it’s an endless, fruitless endeavor. But. It’s also a mindless endeavor. And she needs a mindless endeavor right now—something that’s all muscle so she can let her mind wander, let her brain traverse each available track, consider each available outcome. Wander whatever path. She’s in a mood. She’s in a mood in which she doesn’t want to see anything or know anything. 

But seeing and knowing are inevitable.

And there's suddenly a cluster of bones revealed by her rake.

It’s not just a skeleton of an animal having succumbed to natural circumstances. It’s bones in a certain way, a certain witchy communicative way.

Hilda had gotten a minor in Bone Reading at the Academy, but she’s not had a lot of opportunity to use that knowledge since and has forgotten most of what she’d learned. She focuses and refocuses, mentally running through verb conjugations and pronoun declensions, vocab lists.

Hilda’s best guess at a translation:

“To talk to. Please.”

She sighs. Sure, there are probably other entities clambering for their voices to be heard from beyond, but she’s got a feeling about this. And she’s got nothing better to do.

She leans against the handle of her rake, says, 

“Lilith, I summon you.”

A whirl of dust and then Lilith is in front of her.

“I miss the telephone,” Lilith says.

“I think what you really miss is being able to do whatever you want whenever you want without all this summoning rigamarole,” Hilda says. Lilith cocks her head, looks Hilda up and down, says,

“You may be right. Maybe I will go ahead and find a nice body to possess.”

“Please don’t.”

“Hmm. I’m much too busy to sustain a human life anyway. Speaking of, have you spoken to Miss Wardwell?”

Hilda bites her lip, thinks. She doesn’t know what this interview is about, and she’s not sure she likes this turn it's taken.

“Why do you ask?” Hilda says. Lilith brushes off a crag of limestone and reclines on it. She looks as if it’s as comfortable as any lush piece of furniture—she’s sedate and seductive and luxurious. She tosses her hair, says,

“Just wondering what she thought about all the marijuana in her shed.”

Well that’s a relief. At least it hadn’t been anything lewd or particularly intrusive. And as the cherry on top, it has a pat answer:

“I took care of that before she could be confused about and appalled by it.” Lilith’s eyebrows rise, and she says,

“A few things about that statement. One, if you took care of it, where’s my share? And two, what makes you think she’d be appalled?” Hilda huffs,

“I haven’t sold any yet. What would you as a spirit form and ruler of Hell do with either kush or the monetary proceeds of selling said kush?”

“I’d think of something.”

“Oh I’m sure you would.” 

Lilith looks up at her under heavy eyelids, pats at a spot next to her on the rock, says,

“Why don’t you sit with me for a bit?” Hilda looks at the rock. Lilith makes it look very appealing, but she knows it will be chilly and damp and hard. She props her rake against a tree and joins her anyway. Lilith’s charmed it to feel like a feather bed at three am on a cozy night with soft rain falling outside. Hilda sighs and nestles her head onto Lilith’s shoulder before she can even think to stop herself.

“Why wouldn’t Miss Wardwell be appalled about discovering a bunch of mysterious drugs in her shed? What do you know that I don’t?” Hilda says.

“It wasn’t me who got her into that trouble in Saratoga. That was all her own doing. Maybe our girl has a little bit of a dark side.”

“Our girl? What’s that supposed to mean?” Hilda says.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have a soft spot for her,” Lilith says as she begins tracing nonsense patterns with her fingertips along Hilda’s thigh above her wool skirt. “I do, too. I spent so much time in her body that I feel like we’re kind of friends. And you spent so much time in—”

“Oh that’s enough,” Hilda says. She thinks of Mary’s face in the dim light of the shed, her taut body trembling in that gorgeous nightgown. She shivers. And of course she knows Lilith notices because Lilith laughs and traces her pattern higher on her thigh.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind if—”

“Absolutely not. We’ve been down that particular road before and it ended up a no outlet, and also Mary probably needs a rest. And even if she doesn’t, she certainly doesn’t need to get mixed up in all this.” Lilith hums noncommittally. Hilda switches thoughts, “Did you have anything to actually say? Or was this just a social call?”

“Just a social call.”

“Oh. Ok then.” Hilda relaxes a little against Lilith’s shoulder, allows the tingling feeling of Lilith’s burning fingers wash over her. Those fingertips are still lazy and not asking for anything or declaring anything; they’re just there to be there, enjoying themselves and enjoying the enjoyment they’re creating. Lilith says,

“You know what I miss most about being in Mary’s body?”

Hilda doesn’t want to talk or think about that. The whole mess had struck her as totally unethical, and she’s still not quite over it. Especially because Lilith is treating it as so ordinary that she should steal somebody’s body for months and use it in all kinds of ways that the original owner probably wouldn’t approve of. Of course what does she know about what Mary might or might not approve of? Admittedly nothing. But she’s pretty certain Mary hadn’t signed a waiver and released her body to Lilith free and clear.

Hilda hasn’t been quick enough organizing her protestations to this line of talk, and Lilith resumes,

“I miss her hot tub. And having my own place so we could meet there instead of sneaking around at Spellman Mortuary.” 

“You run Hell. You couldn’t just… conjure up your own hot tub and drag me there?”

Lilith looks over at her, and her hand stills briefly but then starts up again as she says,

“I don’t want you to experience that place. The overall environment, the politics, the jeering and leering the demons would subject you to, all the awful sounds and sights and smells. No.”

Hilda places her hand over Lilith’s on her thigh, and they look at each other.

“You don’t like it there,” Hilda says. Lilith shakes her head in a silent no.

Hilda reels with this new knowledge. No wonder Lilith as Mary had grabbed life and wrung every bit of excitement out of it that she could. She’d never chosen anything about her existence, had been made for a purpose and had been pigeonholed into that purpose for ages. She’d had just those few months to herself and is now back in a designated role that doesn’t suit her nature and proclivities and desires and ideals.

Hilda doesn’t believe in pity sex, in disingenuously giving one’s body to temporarily alleviate another’s pain. But she does believe that physical intimacy—if authentic and mutually exchanged without pretense—can be a balm to a broken heart and spirit.

Her hand is still covering Lilith’s, and she begins circling her thumb over the hot, soft skin. Lilith says,

“You’re under no obligation—”

“I want to,” Hilda says.

They’re in the cellar, one naked light bulb flickering above them, canned goods neatly arranged in plywood watching over them. It’s a close, damp space, and they’re pressed together on the floor, Hilda in Lilith’s lap, wool skirt bunched up around her hips.

They’re kissing. It’s all tongues and preternatural heat. And then Lilith’s questioning hands at Hilda’s hips. Hilda bucks in answer, makes room for Lilith to remove underwear.

Lilith glides the garment down over smooth flesh, tosses toward an array of jars of peaches on a low shelf.

“I thought you wanted to keep this platonic, focus on our typewriter…?” Lilith breathes against Hilda’s neck.

“A woman has the prerogative to change her mind,” Hilda says. She grabs Lilith’s hand and guides it to between her legs.


End file.
